Web protests, White House and GOP rebellion put SOPA on life support

Controversial anti-piracy legislation, already on life support in the House, is now in serious doubt in the Senate, where the confluence of a Republican rump rebellion, White House concerns and a Wednesday blackout by Wikipedia, Mozilla and other big-name websites is enough to give some senators second thoughts.

Republican Sen. Scott Brown, locked in a re-election fight with Elizabeth Warren in Democratic-leaning Massachusetts, announced on Twitter on Tuesday that he’d vote against the Senate's PROTECT IP Act and the House's Stop Online Piracy Act. Sen. Ben Cardin (D-Md.), a PIPA co-sponsor, now opposes the bill as written, and sources involved in the fight say they expect more lawmakers to drop their support for the measures backed by Hollywood but opposed by Silicon Valley.

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It all amounts to this: Congress woke the sleeping tech giant, and now lawmakers are desperate to pacify it.

Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) is scrambling to rewrite his bill to soften the blowback from the high-tech sector — and from senators worried about the political implications of jamming an industry that has the capacity to communicate across the planet in fractions of a second.

Representatives of both industries met with aides to Leahy, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and Sens. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) and Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) on Tuesday to discuss whether there’s a way to bridge the differences between Hollywood and Silicon Valley.

The two major sticking points: a provision that would allow movie, music and television companies to sue Web companies when their sites support pirated material and one that would allow the government to block certain Web searches.

“They’re trying to see how much of that they can keep in place and not run the risk of getting the Web, Netroots crowd anger channeled at them,” one tech industry source said of the content providers.

The anti-piracy push may not be dead yet, but Congress is holding out a mirror to see if it’s breathing. Industry reps from both sides are pessimistic that there will be a palatable compromise any time soon.

The real turning point, according to industry and congressional sources, came when tech-backing members of the House Judiciary Committee used parliamentary maneuvers to forestall a markup of SOPA late last year. That gave Web companies, who often can’t agree on how to turn on a computer, time to coalesce.

“The best thing for its opponents was the delay,” said the chief of staff to a House Judiciary Committee member who has been supportive of the bill.

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CORRECTION: Corrected by: Zack Hale @ 01/18/2012 11:25 AM
CORRECTION: Sen. Ben Cardin’s position on the PROTECT IP Act was misstated in an earlier version of this article. He is still a co-sponsor even though he now opposes the bill as currently written.